Problems with registering unpaying participants

[kjersti]

I am trying to make a registration type for unpaying customers(invited speakers etc.)which is paublicly unavailable and hidden and coded and since it has cost value 0,- this particular registration type would not be redirect the registrants to Paypal, as it is impossible to pay 0. The problems I experience however is that to me it seems that I have to tick a 'publicly available' registration type when enter a fee code.
So the question is: how should I give the registrants access to the 'publicly unavailable registration types' And the other problem is that if I have a registration type with cost value 0 they are still redirected to the PayPal site to pay.How can I avoid this?

Can you help me?

Kjersti

[jmacgreg]

Hi Kjersti,

This looks like a bug to me, and I'll report it as such -- there should indeed be a way to register with a conference with a special code, thereby avoiding paying a fee. OCS is currently undergoing active development towards the next release, so this may be addressed in the next little while.

In the meantime, I would suggest having your conference manager register your invited speakers, etc. themselves, through the registration interface.

Cheers,
James

[roseknight]

Hi James
I actually ran into the same problem. I need both payingfee registration type and nofee registration type. When the Paypal payment is turn on, both registration types redirect users to the PayPal interface, which is not necessary for the nofee registration users.
It is possible to let the conference manager to manually register these users. However, if there are quite a few nofee registrants, it will be tedious to manually register all of them.

Is that possible to fix this issue and publish a patch?

Thanks
Jun

[jmacgreg]

Hi Jun,

Hrm, you posted a year to the day that I said I would post a bug report, but didn't. My apologies to Kjersti for not following up previously. I have posted a bug report here: http://pkp.sfu.ca/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4054. Please feel free to Cc yourself to the report for any updates, and add any other comments as you see fit.

Cheers,
James

[jalperin]

Jun,

What would be your preferred way of this being handled? Should the registration complete entirely without any manual intervention? I was writing a bug fix, but I wasn't sure if it was prudent to let anyone fully register with the free registration type without any manual intervention. If you could explain your preferred workflow it would be helpful.

Thanks

[roseknight]

Hi Juan
Thank you very much for your reply.
What I expect to do is:
Define two registration types. One is PayFee registrant. The other one is NoFee registrant.
When a user chooses the PayFee registration type, he/she wil be redirected to the PayPal system to pay the conference fee. After paying the fee, he/she is redirected back to the conference website.
When a user choose the NoFee registration type, he/she will directly pass through without being directed to PayPal.

For a short-time solution, you may like to check whether the cost is 0. If Yes, it is a NoFee user. If No, it is a PayFee user. In the long run, you may like to change the user registration module. So far, it seems that all registraion types will be PayFee ones if the PayPal payment is enabled.

Thanks a lot for your support.

Jun

[jalperin]

Jun,

You can easily add a check to see if its a noFee registration type and let the users register without being redirected to PayPal. However, you will have a situation where you are allowing anyone to fully register for your conference without ever making sure they qualify for the NoFee registration. I.e. there is no manual control and any person can register for free.

If this is what you'd like, I can post a patch for you shortly.

Juan

[roseknight]

Hi Juan
Thanks a lot for your reply. Your solution sounds great to me. Please post the patch.
To avoid malicious registrants, could you please add a validation check? Just like many forums, a set of random number or characters are generated. The registrant has to input this random number or string in a textfield to validate the registration.

Have a great day.
Jun

[jalperin]

Jun,

You can try out this patch. I haven't tested it thoroughly and you may want to change the message displayed.

Code: Select all

Index: classes/registration/form/UserRegistrationForm.inc.php
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/ocs2/classes/registration/form/UserRegistrationForm.inc.php,v
retrieving revision 1.17.2.1
diff -u -r1.17.2.1 UserRegistrationForm.inc.php
--- classes/registration/form/UserRegistrationForm.inc.php   3 Nov 2008 22:00:02 -0000   1.17.2.1
+++ classes/registration/form/UserRegistrationForm.inc.php   16 Feb 2009 13:16:58 -0000
@@ -275,7 +275,21 @@
       $queuedPayment =& $paymentManager->createQueuedPayment($schedConf->getConferenceId(), $schedConf->getSchedConfId(), QUEUED_PAYMENT_TYPE_REGISTRATION, $user->getUserId(), $registrationId, $cost, $registrationType->getCurrencyCodeAlpha());
       $queuedPaymentId = $paymentManager->queuePayment($queuedPayment, time() + (60 * 60 * 24 * 30)); // 30 days to complete
 
-      $paymentManager->displayPaymentForm($queuedPaymentId, $queuedPayment);
+      // check for free registration and skip payment in that case
+      if ( $cost == 0 ) {
+         $paymentManager->fulfillQueuedPayment($queuedPaymentId, $queuedPayment);
+         
+         $templateMgr =& TemplateManager::getManager();
+         $templateMgr->assign(array(
+            'currentUrl' => Request::url(null, null, 'index'),
+            'pageTitle' => 'schedConf.registration',
+            'message' => 'schedConf.registration.alreadyRegisteredAndPaid'
+         ));
+         $templateMgr->display('common/message.tpl');
+         exit();         
+      } else {
+         $paymentManager->displayPaymentForm($queuedPaymentId, $queuedPayment);
+      }
 
       return true;
    }

To change the message displayed change the locale key in the line with 'message' => 'schedConf.registration...' to use a different locale key (and make sure the key is in your locale.xml file).

Good luck,

[roseknight]

Thanks Juan.
the patch works well for me.

Have a good day.
Jun

[jpmcc]

Worked for me too. I have updated the bug report http://pkp.sfu.ca/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4054 with a link to your patch and a request that it should be included in the core OCS product

Thanks - John

[asmecher]

Hi all,

Juan's suggestion in this thread is the best work-around for OCS 2.1.2. The change is implemented for OCS 2.3, which will be released soon.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

[jpmcc]

Good news. Thanks!

[Robertb]

Hi everybody,

there is still one issue, which was not resolved from the initial post:

So the question is: how should I give the registrants access to the 'publicly unavailable registration types'

I got the same issue... I would like to add a booking option for local participants with a reduced conference fee, but the option should not be visible to regular registrants.

I think this could be done by either providing a direct linkto the hidden registration type (which can be distributed among local participants) or by a "fee code" which reduces the fee of the regular registration to a predefined reduced rate during the process.

Is there any way to do such things in the current state of OCS?

Thanks a lot,
Robert